


A Torrid Love Affair

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: AU setting, Blood, Gore, Hints of Mental Illness, M/M, Mentions of Animal Cruelty, Not A Nice Story, Serial Killing, Skinning, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:24:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His name is Zacharie, and he is waiting for his prey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Torrid Love Affair

He sits up in the highest branches of the thick oak; the one with its arms curled out towards the windowsills of the houses framing both sides of its trunk. He's concealed within a calculated degree of safety, the foliage masking him from the ground as well as his hodgepodge of skin and ceramic and paint protects his face. He idly snips leaves from the twigs brushing up against his side, holding them up to the tiny pinholes within the sockets of the mask. The wet of April has made the tree brilliant and green. His breath drags against the underside of the toothed mouth forever frozen into a grin. 

He folds the leaves and they break perpendicular to the veins, their insides fresh and green. 

His name is Zacharie, and he is waiting for his prey. 

His victims follow no particular pattern, and consist of only those who he finds particularly interesting. He can go months with killing nothing more than the local cats if nobody interesting sparks his eye, even if he'd long grown out of the exhilaration that skinning felines had given him. It was an infantile pastime but it stopped him from taking the knife to his own skin out of sheer boredom. Boredom had left him with thick plots of scar tissue running over his arms and back and legs and even across his face and neck. He doesn't particularly enjoy boredom, but at the very least it gave him a reason to make his masks. 

Actually--he doesn't remember which came first, the scars or the mask. Maybe they evolved together in symbiosis. Whatever the case, it's irrelevant nitpicking with the minuscule philosophic merit of chickens and eggs. 

He balances on the branch, lithe and light as a cat. He purrs in waiting. There is one, lately who has piqued his interest. The boy from the baseball diamond; the blond and pale man who shrugged bags and bats over his shoulder to make the quick four block walk to his home. The particular suburban number flanking the left side of the tree. To be precise. And then the six and a half block trip to school, the disappointing seven hours where he was concealed inside concrete save for those delightful moments out in the field or by the smoke-stained dumpster. The boy walked everywhere, it seemed. Zacharie likes that. It made him easier to observe. To take in the fascinating figure in fullness. 

He's so wonderful and beautiful that it's  _almost_ a shame. A shame that a proper courtship could not be an option, because it could be 

But a man such as that would never concede to being seen with a man behind a mask, nor a man bloated so bloated with scar. He is far too stoic, straight-backed and slender for something so debauched. 

A shame, a shame, such a pretty shame. 

However, even the whispering that tugs and tears near the hind of his head tell him to take this slower, weigh the options. To play with the prey more than usual. He turns his eyes skyward in exasperation, to the barest hint of murky cloud visible from between the leaves. 

Zacharie hesitates to call them  _God_ , because God implies a degree of benevolence and subservience. They are simply Voice. When Voice speaks to him he listens, and he talks back to them. Considers what they say, because though he listens he does not always behave. They are not God because Zacharie is no puppet. 

He is an animal, an intelligent animal devoid of a soul claimed by an illusionary sky man and he plans to stay that way. 

_Stalking_  was a word he loved because it made him out to be a predator, the apex of a long food change that transcended social norm and structure and evolved back into the natural state of  _kill_. 

He stalked his prey like the cats that he killed stalked tiny insects and scrabbly mice amidst scraps of trash and bits of discarded food. He tasted mouse, once, when the hunger clawed too deep at his stomach and the opportunity presented itself. 

He stays in the tree, watching and waiting for the man to emerge from his house. Every evening after the sun has gone down, he goes for a jog around the block before dinner. Zacharie has been waiting for weeks now, prolonging the juicy inevitable. The couple of hours of waiting that remains now is nothing. It is not a huge problem and after all, he typically keeps his craft confined to the night. 

When the night finally falls and the figure takes those first few strides down the sidewalk Zacharie strikes, and he hopes that the last thing the man sees before he falls is the loom of the white mask as it springs out of the shadow. 

\---------

He had dragged the man back to the squalid hovel where he did his work. It was a burnt out building caught in perpetual condemnation by a city council who didn't particularly care one way or another. 

He will wake soon. Zacharie prefers them to be awake. If they're not awake, it's like toying with a corpse, and that's boring and wholly disrespectful to a specimen that's fascinated him for so long. 

The man's arms are already bound by the time he comes to consciousness. 

He's confused and above all  _angry_ , like Zacharie had expected. The man was full of anger. It had oozed even in the elegance of his stride and the force behind his swing. It had stuck thick in his jaw as he slept. 

His threats are cold and cruel and firm and nigh edible in their weight. Zacharie want to lick them out of the air and feel their callousness coalesce in his stomach. It's wonderful. He's wonderful. Zacharie looks down at him, and his leer matches the one splayed across his mask. 

His lips are pretty and perfect, and they wont be warm for long so it would be such a shame to not indulge. He looms over the bound man and dips his tongue into his mouth. 

The man tries to bite him, so he bites back. He tastes rust in his mouth and laughs at the sting in his tongue. Blood drips onto the man's skin, and he scowls. Zacharie laughs and licks.  _Laps_ , he corrects. 

If there was more time, perhaps he could indulge himself further. But he grows impatient and desperately wants to see the real beauty of the body on the inside. 

He pulls something from his back pocket and brandishes it to the boy. It's a broad knife with a hooked prong at the end. He'd swiped it from a swap meet about a year back. It was thick with bloody rust. The man eyes it. 

"What are you  _doing_?" He hisses, eyes full of rage and  _yes_ , the barest hint of fear. 

He laughs and it's deep and dark and shaking. He taps the knife's tip against the folds of his forehead. 

"It's called a modus operandi,  _amigo_. Perhaps you've heard of mine."

Zacharie presses his palm against the side of his face, forcing his opposite cheek against the concrete. He has access to the side column of his hair line and this is where you begin, right by the ear. The first slice is too enthusiastic and he hears the squelch of your knife delving into meat and not solely skin. 

Oh, he tries to escape  _so_  bad. Drives a foot into Zacharie's stomach once and leaves him feeling winded, but there's nothing much he can with his hands bound. He picks up the knife and bang him one, twice, three times against the ground until he's more compliant. Zacharie sits across his hips, pinning him down below the belt. Although he's much taller than Zacharie, the killer is thicker and heavier and weighs him down easily as he works. 

And yes, the screams are music, utter music! Even when they're deep and throaty like his are, they sound sweet and waft in the air like the tinkling tone of some antique music box impressed with faint patterns of dye. 

Shock and blood loss had long taken its toll by the time he finishes peeling the face away from its former owner. Holding it up, he can see the dim light from above highlight ever pink vein and every dark spot where a bit of meat remains. 

He would bleach the skin to a bone white and stretch it over the thick templates he makes from scratch. Stitch along the sides and slip a bit of leather around to complete it. Then he would have a lovely new face to add to his collection. 

The rest of the body was now entirely mangled and useless to him. Limbs and genitalia may have claimed the fascination of others but to you, it's the face that holds the immutable significance. But maybe Zacharie will keep some of the hair; the man was beautifully toe-headed and it wraps like white gold spun around his bloodied fingers. 

He has an electrical razor lying around, the same one you use to shave the local stray he's befriended down to the skin. Cats look far more terrifying without their fur. The Judge; as he's come to call him, is the only cat he's let live so long. Even when Zacharie's bored without a new victim to watch he doesn't raise a knife or hand or brick against him. 

It's battery-powered, and there's still enough juice left to fire the razor on. Zacharie takes to the corpse's head and shave off the pale locks, watchings them flutter to the floor.  He nicks its skin a couple of times, but for the most part it's a clean shave. He's delighted. It's soft and smells of chalk dust and dirt. It makes him think of wide open fields and peanuts and fathers he's never had who point to uniformed players spitting chew tobacco and  _say one day that'll be you son, one day, one day._

It makes him feel safe, like the masks make him feel safe. Perhaps he'll place the bits of hair on the inside of the one he's about to make so you can take in its scent with every breath. 

Zacharie feels too calm to get rid of the body at the moment. It can wait the night. He'll pick a few pieces away for the Judge before he scraps the whole thing. But for now he's tired and his fingers hurt from the precision of his previous effort. 

He tucks pieces of the hair into the collar of his sweater and sleep up against the wall. The scent makes him dream of something different. 


End file.
